None of my eclectic software is registered during the installation process. In fact there's no difference between running the setup and extracting the zip file. This means you won't find an entry in your Add/Remove Programs tool. So, how do you uninstall them? With the exception of the two listed below, you can simply delete the folder from wherever it was installed. For example, Inbox is most likely installed at C:\Program Files\Inbox. First, ensure the program is not currently active. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder, right click on the folder and select Delete. With the below exceptions, none of the software writes to the registry so there is nothing more to clean up.

Ping Monitor Service is a Windows service so you need to uninstall the service. Do this by executing the following at the command line: pingservice /uninstall. To uninstall the listener, execute the following command: pinglistenerservice /uninstall. On the host and listener machines remove any registry entries found at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PingService. You can then delete the program files and folder.

Disk Usage Analyser v1 can optionally be installed as an Explorer context menu item. To uninstall this shell extension, run Disk Usage Analyser v1 and select the uninstall option (click the arrow next to what looks like an exploding Rubik's Cube (apt?)). Alternatively, there is a file called DAShell_Uninstall.reg which will also uninstall the shell extension, just run it by double clicking it. Once the shell extension is uninstalled, you can then delete the program files and folder. Disk Usage Analyser also adds itself to your start menu. Navigate to the DUA entry in your start menu, right click on the folder and select Delete.

Desktop Calendar and Desktop Info appear to be attached to the desktop and technically they are. However they still disappear when you click the "Show Desktop" button in the Quick Launch toolbar. This is correct behaviour according to Windows; it's just very annoying. Presently, there's nothing you can do about this. If you accidently click the "Show Desktop" button, you can click it a second time to restore your desktop windows. You need to minimise each window individually to reveal Desktop Calendar. Desktop Info v0.60 will reveal itself when it is run for a second time. See the readme.txt for details.

This is a known problem in version 1 of Disk Usage Analyser when analysing what used to be considered large volumes or machines that have several volumes totalling 80GB or more. Version 2 fixes this problem. You can work around it by limiting the analysis to specific sub-folders. You can start analyser using a command line parameter. eg DiskAnalyser.exe "c:\program files". If you have the shell extension installed you can start DUA from the Windows Explorer right click context menu (right click on a folder) so it begins on the selected folder. This is quicker and less memory intensive if you know roughly where you want to be.

A few people have reported their computer slows down significantly when running Desktop Calendar (and presumably Desktop Info as well). This may be related to a known bug with some graphics cards which have trouble with the Windows transparency functions. At present there's no solution to this problem.

Desktop Calendar (or Desktop Info) is listed in Task Manager but it doesn't appear on the screen. The most likely cause is it is actually positioned somewhere outside of your current desktop. You may have set it up on a secondary monitor or you may have changed your desktop configuration. To correct this problem, make sure Calendar is not running, open the calendar.ini file in Notepad and adjust the Top and Left values to be within the realms of your desktop, say between 0 and 800 for the Left value and between 0 and 600 for the Top value.

You can move Desktop Calendar around the desktop by dragging one of the navigation buttons while holding down a shift key. This new position is saved when Calendar closes down. If Calendar doesn't exit cleanly or Windows doesn't shut down cleanly, this new position may not be saved. You can manually set a new desktop position by editing it's configuration file directly. Make sure Calendar is not running, open the calendar.ini file in Notepad and adjust the Top and Left values to be within the realms of your desktop, say between 0 and 800 for the Left value and between 0 and 600 for the Top value. Save the changes and exit Notepad then restart Calendar.

This is because the Calendar is active. Windows will not delete a file that is in use. If you can see the calendar on your desktop, right click on one of the navigation buttons at the bottom and select Close. You can now delete the Calendar program folder. If you can't see the calendar on your desktop, you'll need to use Task Manager to end the process. Press Control+Shift+Escape (hold down the Control and Shift buttons while you press Escape) to open Windows Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab and look for the Calendar.exe process. Right click and select End Process. You can now delete the Calendar program folder.

Setting up Post Office can be confusing. Here's some hints on setting it up for internal use.

Post Office acts like a proxy. It becomes the middle man for your local email. It will retrieve all mail for your accounts and store it locally. Each email user in your local network then retrieves their email from Post Office instead of directly from the outside. Each email user also sends email via Post Office instead of via your uplink (isp).

Set up Post Office on one of your local machines, let's say for example 192.168.1.1. You'll need to give it a dns server, normally the dns server of your uplink (isp). Switch on delivery of outbound mail, fetch uplink, pop server, smtp server. You should give a domain name also. If you don't have a real one, other than your isp domain, just make one up. You might want to also switch on the debug logging for a while.

Next you need to configure each mail account that will be used to send, receive and fetch mail. This is the same email accounts that each user on your local network currently has. Once these are working Post Office will begin retrieving email for all your configured accounts.

Next, each user on your local network needs to change their email configuration (eg Outlook etc) to send and receive email via Post Office. This means changing your pop server and smtp server to the Post Office machine (eg 192.168.1.1). You probably currently have something like "pop.myisp.com" and "smtp.myisp.com" or maybe just "mail.myisp.com". You need to change these to the ip address of the Post Office machine.

Once this is working, Post Office will accept outgoing email for each of it's configured accounts. At regular intervals it will attempt to deliver the outgoing email. This is where the dns server configuration comes in to play. Instead of relaying the email via your uplink (isp) Post Office will connect directly to the recipient's mail server to deliver the mail. Some internet providers are blocking the smtp port preventing their customers from sending directly to external mail servers. In this case you will be forced to send all mail via your isp mail servers.

When a local user sends email to another local user, Post Office will recognise that it is local and not attempt to deliver it externally but simply place it in the inbox of the target user.

If things aren't working right, switch on the log debug and watch the log file for clues. Also, if the machine running Post Office has a firewall, you'll need to open up ports 25 and 110.

Everytime i sit down at an XP box i have to try to remember how to add the command prompt to the explorer context menu so i'm putting it here so at least i know where to look.

1. Open the registry editor and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\Shell
2. Add a new key called "Command" and set the default value to "Command Prompt" with type REG_SZ
3. Under this new key create another new key, also called "Command" and set the default value to cmd.exe /k cd\\\"%1\\\" with type REG_SZ

Take careful note of the number of backslashes and the double quotes. This will take effect immediately.

To force Windows to automatically log on to a specific account after startup:

1. Open the registry editor and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
2. Add/modify the AutoAdminLogon (REG_DWORD) to a value of 1.
3. Add/modify the DefaultDomainName, DefaultUserName and DefaultPassword (REG_SZ) entries to the desired account. The DefaultDomainName is the host name of the machine for a local user account.

"The kids were on the computer and accidentally pressed some key combination and now the picture is upside down."

This is a feature of some display drivers. You can rotate the display up to 360 degrees with four particular presets of 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees. Why? To accommodate the newer LCD displays which can be rotated to give you landscape or portrait modes. The four presets can be assigned hot-keys, the most common being CTRL+ALT+UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT (that's the arrow keys, not the page keys).

If the kids accidentally found one of these key combinations, you can correct it by pressing CTRL+ALT+UP to bring it back to normal. Failing that, you'll find the display software running in the system tray (next to the clock). Open it up and scout around for the display orientation settings.

"Messenger refuses to log in. It was working yesterday and i can log in to the same account on a different machine."

I tried a bunch of things: reinstalled the latest messenger, rebooted, installed an old Messenger, rebooted, installed Miranda, rebooted, rebooted, checked recent updates, rebooted. Nothing enabled this machine to connect to the MSN Messenger service. I was able to connect to the same MSN account on a different machine. The only clue was the error message indicated the DLL that actually performed the authentication with the service. This told me Messenger was basically working but the service at the other end was rejecting the login.

After much googling I eventually came across an obscure connection to the system clock. Sure enough the clock had been put forward one month. After putting it back, Messenger connected straight away.

This tells me, the local time is used as part of the authentication process with the MSN service. Why?

When i regoogled the new information, it turns out this is a common problem.

This example shows how to add nfo file types to the text file preview. Change the extension for any other file type.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.nfo]
"Content Type"="text/plain"
"PerceivedType"="text"